Hi there.
I’ve been on the forum since the beginning (ish), and throughout it all, I’ve seen the evolution of guides. I’ve seen the good, the bad, the gibberish, and the overcomplicated. And since I still see quite a few poor quality guides around today, I figured I’d make this post to help people understand what they’re missing. So here it is, in 5 semi-short tips.
Number 1: Tell People What They’re Doing
By FAR the biggest problem I see is that people don’t actually look at guides for understanding. They look at them—and the guides are complicit in this too—for an exact step by step method to make one specific mechanism. Now, I have no problem with this, but that can’t be the only part of the guide. It makes it a thousand times harder to understand what’s going on, what the mechanism is, and how to recreate it in your own way. So I strongly suggest adding some sort of explanation at the beginning, detailing what you’re doing in simple terms.
Examples: Bedwars, Prop Stacking (ish),
Number 2: Never Be Satisfied
Now, this one isn’t as much of a problem, but it’s something that should certainly be considered. A lot of guides will have an incredibly inefficient method of doing something (take the neon keyboard guide for example) and that will continue to be taught for months. People will learn an inefficient method and be stumped on how to improve it. As the creator of the guide and the consumer of it, never be satisfied! Never assume something is the most optimal method until it’s clearly proven.
Number 3: Make It Interesting
Now, I’ll admit that there’s a bit of hypocrisy in this one, but hear me out. People aren’t gonna read a guide that’s all text, and they won’t understand one that’s all images. They need something to grab their attention and keep it there. I know I sound like your 3rd-8th grade English teacher, but it’s taught for a reason. The best guides are ones that people actually care about. Throw in some headers, add some pictures, yada yada. Make it fun.
Examples: Signs, Repeaters, Wires
Number 4: Fact (and Spell) Check
If I click onto a guide and I immediately see something blatantly incorrect, I’m clicking off. If it’s unreadable, I’m clicking off. A lot of people on the forums have this problem, where they can’t finish a sentence, or they Capitalize Every Word and it’s incredibly irritating. I know I’m being a pedant here, but like, come on. You know how to use a period my man. I know a lot of the community is pretty young, but still. Of course, if you have one or two spelling mistakes, or you aren’t a native English speaker, whatever. That’s totally fine. But give it a solid effort, at least.
Number 5: Try Something New
If I’m being honest, most guides I see on this site are the same. “How 2 maek house” or “The ULTIMATE GUIDE on how to make a TREE” or something. If you wanna make one of those, go ahead. But if you have an idea for something new, something cool, please try it. There are a bunch of people (myself including) lurking, waiting for a single interesting technical post. If one of those appeared, I’d be all over it. And they do, every once in a while. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make one yourself. You’ll learn so much more if you just try.
Examples: Wires, Bedwars
I know it was a lot of text, but thanks for sticking through this with me. And if you didn’t and you just scrolled to the bottom, PLEASE for all our sakes read through them. You lose 2 minutes and the community gains something genuinely useful.
shdwy out.
